The trees you can email
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Cities around the globe are transforming urban jungles into literal jungles. Driven by rising sensitivity to environmental and air quality issues, cities are opting to boost their tree populations in urban areas. In a previous column, I described a pitfall to this approach in the past: overplanting female trees that resulted in a pollen apocalypse in the US.
Nevertheless, trees usher in several significant benefits for urban landscapes. Often, the most vital of these improvements is the reduction of ambient temperature. When sunlight is absorbed by leaves in photosynthesis, less heat radiates into the atmosphere. In contrast, darker-colored streets generate increased temperatures by absorbing the rays. Additionally, trees improve air quality by removing CO2 and other pollutants from the air. Dust and fine particulates are captured by the leaves before being washed away when it rains. Visualize an umbrella with air filters-that’s what trees are in cities.
All of this is fine and dandy, but how do you email a tree? Well for that we need to go to the land down under. In the early twenty-teens, the city of Melbourne, Australia chose to highlight their urban development, based on scientific studies of the benefits of trees in cities. These Aussies commissioned a bold new initiative to catalog each and every one of their more than 70,000 trees. Once the data was collected, the city’s urban forest team collaborated with a data visualist to display the information visually. The result was the Urban Forest Visual. First published in 2013, this massive online interactive map allowed visitors to see every tree in the whole city along with what species and age the tree was.
Alongside the map, when looking at a specific tree, was an option to email the tree. The map’s designers’ originally intended email as a method for the public to quickly alert the city of any issues regarding the trees or ask questions. However, as is so often the case, intention does not always equal the final use method. New visitors to the site read the words “Email this tree”-and responded! Soon love letters to the trees began to flood in from the city residences and around the globe. The urban forest team then commenced to respond to these emails on behalf of the trees.
Numerous heartwarming stories have emerged. Take the one of a young boy who emailed a tree sharing about his school. When the “tree” replied to him, he was so overjoyed that he took the printout to his Show and Tell. The school was thrilled and decided to plant the same kind of tree in their garden. Or take for example, the man who wrote a thank you note to the tree under which he met his wife for the first time.
The city of Melbourne designed this as part of a bigger urban forest strategy. Each year they are adding 3,000 trees to their already sizable 70,000. The goal is to increase the city’s canopy cover from today’s 25% to 40+% by 2040. The city set out to improve the lives of their residents and along the way, they inadvertently ended up creating a giant map of trees for anyone to converse with via email. So, if you are feeling lonely or have always wanted to “talk” to a tree, you can find the map online at melbourneurbanforestvisual.com.au.
